If
by Sera dy Relandrant
Summary: Series of why shots. These are also open ended plot bunnies, free for use. Ch 5: What if Bella was Sorted into Hufflepuff?
1. Dark Lily

It started innocently enough.

Lily Potter was only three when she realized that Uncle Ronnikins did not hold her favorite stuffed toy, Octopus (named oh-so inventively because it looked like an inflated purple spider and at three, Lily was as unacquainted in her spic n' span house with spiders, crawling in cobwebs, as she was with octopuses) in the same regard as she did. He always shifted and looked a little uncomfortable when she'd march into the living room, announcing to the adults that Octy wanted a biscuit – "No more biscuits for Octy or you," Mum would invariably say but Lily kept it up because it was her job to be a hopeful little ray of sunshine. But she never thought to connect Uncle Ron and spiders until the day they all visited the Haunted House of Horrors in Paris and a spider fell on top of his head.

"Your uncle has arachnophobia, darling," Aunt Hermione smiled kindly and patted her head. "Don't worry he'll be fine – it's sweet of you to worry."

But little Lily wasn't convinced. Nothing in the Haunted House of Horrors – not the pickled toads leering out at her from the glass jars or the shriveled hand that had stretched out to grip James' wrist or the stuffed werewolf that looked so _alive _– had scared her as much as Uncle Ron's scream. _He_ was the grown-up. Grown-ups didn't get scared. They weren't _supposed_ to.

Afterwards, while James and Al and Rose wandered, squealing ecstatically, through the souvenir shop – "Look Rosie! Grr, I'm a zombie!" "James, I know that's a mask. You can't scare me" – Lily sat on a stool next to baby Hugo's pram, sucking her thumb and ruminating gravely.

Uncle Ron tucked her in at night sometimes and assured her, that nice, strong, brave smile on his face, that zombies couldn't get her in the dark ("Whatever Teddy tells you is bull, baby"). If he could get scared, then what about Daddy? What if he was too scared to save her? What would happen to her then? Would she… would she die? Like Grandpa Arthur?

She shivered, even in the balmy spring air, as she remembered his funeral. She only remembered bits and pieces because it had been ages ago, three whole months, but those bits and pieces were enough. Everyone so sad 'nd wearing ugly black clothes, even beautiful Auntie Fleur, Mum slapping her for the first time ("Mummy what's the Solar System?" "Lily Luna Potter I'm warning you" "But Mummy!" and then a stinging slap), Grandma Molly her shoulders drooping in exhaustion and worst of all, Grandpa lying so still in his coffin, shriveled and small like he'd been in the bath too long… Funerals weren't very nice.

It was that day, that beautiful spring day, while the grown-ups were – innocuously enough – discussing the Stock Exchange, blissfully unaware of what the little girl was thinking about that Lily decided that the enemy was spiders. They had to be – unconsciously she connected them with death and funerals and things that grown-ups screamed at even though they weren't supposed to. They were dangerous. They had to be gotten rid of.

**000**

"Can portraits die?"

The question had popped out impulsively from four-year-old Lily's mouth, addressed to no one in particular. Uncle Ron heard. He turned from the tapestry which he'd been De-Doxy-Fying (an annual task for the Weasleys and the Potters who still hadn't decided what to finally do with the house) and smiled gently as he caught her looking at Walburga Black's portrait. Over the years, 12 Grimmauld Place had changed. It was as gloomy and foreboding – particularly to a four-year-old, which was the reason Lily wasn't scrambling around the place playing hide-and-seek with her brothers and had chosen to stick close to the grown-ups – as ever, but somehow it seemed bereft of its spirit.

The Blacks were all dead and now even Walburga's eyes, still and unmoving in her portrait, wore the chill, glassy look of the dead.

"Maybe they can," Uncle Ron said slowly. "I never really thought about it."

Lily traced the ornate gilt frame of the portrait. She brought back a finger perfectly grey with dust. Uncle Ron tsked and walked over, conjuring a handkerchief. "Your mother won't be pleased at all, you know."

It was just at that moment, just as she'd put out her finger for him to rub the dust off with the clean white handkerchief – over the years his skill at conjuring handkerchiefs had improved vastly – that a spider toppled off from the edge of the frame, right in front of Uncle Ron. Before he'd even opened his mouth to yell, Lily took action quickly. The sound of the spider being crushed to death under the soles of her converse was very satisfying. _Very._

"Thanks a million, Lilabee," he said gratefully, patting her head and using the petname normally only Grandma Molly got away with using. But today she didn't mind Uncle Ron using it – she felt very happy with herself. Uncle Ron was grateful – grateful, it was such a big word, but Teddy had told her what it meant – and that was nice. It was nice of her to kill the spider. Killing the spider was a good job, and you had to do good jobs if you wanted to go to Heaven and end up with God. She wanted that.

**000**

She'd always been entranced by fire.

"Lily Luna Potter what are you _doing_?"

Ginny's shriek was loud enough for the seven-year-old to drop the magnifying glass. It clinked on the red terracotta tiles of the terrace. Sunlight glistened, shafts of the rainbow sparkling through the thin lens of the magnifying glass. Pretty.

"Are those spiders? _Lily_!"

It was Mummy's white-hot-mad voice. Not red-hot. White-hot is hotter than red-hot, James had told her and James knew almost everything. "Sorry Mummy," she whimpered, knowing that it was the only way to appease her mother. Apologizing – profusely – always made Mummy happy.

Ginny breathed hard through her nose. Her nose looked red, Lily noted with interest. Her nose was just like Grandma's nose – it turned especially red whenever she was trying to not be angry. It made her look like a tomato. "Who taught you this?"

"James."

"_I'll show you a magic trick, Lilabee.__ A Muggle magic trick, beat that. But don't ever tell Mummy that I showed you. You have to keep the omerta." _

"_The what?"_

"_It's a code of honor – you have to obey it." _

"_The magic trick is an omerta?"_

"_No, ugh…never mind. Just watch this." _

The corners of Ginny's mouth tightened. "I'll write to him." Lucky James, he was at Hogwarts. Or maybe not lucky, if you thought about Howlers.

"Teddy taught him."

"Well _really_. I'll have a few words with him."

"He taught James ages ago. He's probably forgotten."

Ginny frowned. She hasn't considered that possibility. "Well be that as it may…" she shook her head and narrowed her eyes. She was trying to forget the Pygmy Puffs bludgeoned to death, the dragonflies, their wings torn off, left to drown in chipped mugs of boiling water, doxies dissected while still alive for Fred and George's experiments… it had been fun at the time. _Children are as cruel as they seem innocent._

"That's a horrible horrible thing to do, Lily." Hypocrites never look more virtuous than when they're dispensing advice.

"I'm really really sorry, Mummy." Downcast eyes. Sincere regret. Apparently.

"You should be. You should be." Wise shake of the head. Motherly concern. Genuinely. "Don't ever let me catch you doing something like that again."

"Okay, Mummy. I'm sorry." Profuse apologies all the way rule.

"Good. Good. Come out of the sunshine, it's too hot for you to be playing out now." Retreat with the honors of victory.

"In a minute."

_Don't ever let me catch you doing something like that again._

_If I catch you, you're dead. _

_If I don't catch you…_

_Good. Good._

She's seven. Children are as innocent as they seem cruel. The advice of the virtuous, of mothers, must always be followed.

**000**

There's always good fun to be had at The Burrow in summer. Especially at 'The Annual Tactical Sessions of the Clan' as James dryly calls them. Lily doesn't understand and when she tells it to Rose – the most readily-available cousin who's smart enough to understand stuff like that – she says he's been reading too much about the War against Voldemort.

Aunts, uncles, cousins, their friends, their friends' friends assemble from all four corners of the earth – and soon, as Grandma optimistically says, if NASA manages to turn its talk about 'colonies on the moon' into reality, then from outside the earth too.

It's a charmed time of endless ice-cream cones – the crowd at The Burrow is so big these days that they have a special contract with Fortescue for the three summer months when school's out –, no studying, lazing out on the warm sunny lawn with your best pals or sweating it out playing Quidditch under the harsh glare of the afternoon sun (real Quidditch, with seven players per team, too), watching the older ones flirt and betting on who'll end up with who by the end of the summer…

When she's nine, Lily makes up her mind that Victoire and Teddy should get married. Why? Oh because they look good together and will probably have the cutest babies together. That's as good a reason as any for a schoolgirl and a bloke still in Auror training to be thinking about tying the knot… hey, if it worked for her parents…

Oh, wait there's another reason for them to get married! Teddy teaches Victoire dueling! True love!!

"Sure," Rose says dryly when Lily pours out her dreams of hearing the pitter-patter of babies with turquoise-and-blond hair soon. "It has nothing to do with the fact that she's horrendous at Transfig and dueling is a quick way to bring her up to scratch for her N.E.W.Ts." Lily ignores her. Rose is just a realist and what's life without romance?

Romance, glamour, beauty… that's all that life's worth living about.

It's beautiful, Teddy's _Flagrantia _spell. Not _Flagrate_, the standard second-year spell, _Flagrantia, _a spell he developed by himself as part of a project in sixth-year.

It's beautiful, the way the tongue of hot white flame, streaked so prettily with rainbowy flecks, leaps out from the tip of his wand, it's target Victoire until she deflects it neatly with a fire-proof shield she conjures out of thin air… it has all the excitement of a real battle. And Lily loves reading about old battles, her parents', her grandparents'. Uncle Ron is such a good storyteller that she doesn't mind that half of the things he tells her not true (or as he says, with a dismissive wave of his hand and a short laugh, embellishments). It's enough to curl up on his lap and listen to the tales of chivalry and treachery, of pain and beauty, sin and redemption that he weaves.

The first spell she makes her brothers teach her when she gets her first wand is _Flagrantia. _The Fire Spell.

**000**

She likes watching things burn. Not just spiders anymore, spiders who deserve it just _because_. People who've been mean to her. Spiteful people who laugh at Al's Quidditch. They're completely unjustified and they _deserve_ to be punished.

"_She's her mother's daughter isn't she?"_

Long streaming red hair, like a lion's mane. Velvety brown eyes, beautiful with the fire of defiance. Yes she's her mother's daughter. But more fragile, more delicate, and oh-so breakable, with the dainty, flower-like face spied in countless, sepia-tinted photographs of a pretty young woman with emerald-green eyes. Lily. Lily.

In more ways than one. Ginny Potter doesn't remember Zacharias Smith but there are some that still do. Of course they're all spiteful. Completely unjustified. Of course Mummy isn't violent. No, not at all. Sure her slaps can hurt a bit but that's just caring. All mothers do that. Of course.

She likes watching things burn. People, who deserve it just _because. _

Morgana deserved it. She dumped Al. Besides she was alright in the end wasn't she? Three nights' stay at the Hospital Wing was enough. Lily had expected – and hoped – that it'd be St. Mungo's. Still three nights isn't bad. Eighty percent burns? Well she deserved it. Of course.

She flunked Herbology. After she'd worked _so _hard on it, after Scorpius and Rose had both tutored her for hours and hours. How unfair. How mean. Nepotism, turned the wrong way. Yes that's what it was. Professor Longbottom's beloved _Mimbulus Mimbletonia_, in Greenhouse Three caught fire. Yeah, the one he'd had since fifth year. Well so what? He deserved it for – so unfairly – flunking her.

And the best part was, no one ever thought of pointing the finger of suspicion at her. Sweet twelve-year-old Lily Potter, the wizarding world's poster boy's little golden girl. Fragile. Delicate. Breakable. And if James does suspect something, anything he keeps it to himself. Omerta. Besides, he understands her. They're their mother's children.

**000**

"Don't tell me you're hooking up with Dolohov."

"It's none of your business, Al."

"Honestly, Lils, I couldn't care less if you were hooking up with Snape's portrait. I don't care but if James finds out…"

Dolohov isn't James' type. He's not the type any loving, irritating brother would want his baby sister to date. His acquaintance with Salazar's Whiskers has been more than the limited curiosity of a schoolboy, his school essays proudly proclaim that he counts _Falloforma Caligo_as his favorite spell. Hardly an engaging young lad – to some people. Lily isn't one of them.

Sure he's not exactly the Prince Charming on the white horse she'd once dreamt about, but unlike her mother, she's not going to sit around waiting for her knight in shining armor. In some ways, Dolohov, despite his tough talk and all the drugs (Lily's tried Salazar's Whiskers but she's frightened of their effect on her, the powerful hold, the over-dependence) is actually a very sweet kid. And useful too.

They sneak out of Hogwarts sometimes, not to light bonfires and drink confiscated Firewhiskey in the Forbidden Forest like other students, but to pore over the dusty manuscripts with fading letters and tarnished gilt in the library in his crumbling manorhouse. Rose taught Lily to Apparate while she was practicing for her license, so it's not much of a problem to sneak out of the Gryffindor dorms at night. In the morning she just uses more make-up than usual and takes a good, hard swig of Firewhiskey – the recommended remedy for a rough night out.

And they _are_ rough. It's not all reading. Lily is fascinated, simply fascinated by the spells she learns – some of them bordering uncomfortably on Dark – and she can't rest until she practices them for herself. Dolohov, with his typical contrariness, refuses to help her by enacting the role of victim and so she's forced to turn to the usual – spiders, mice, lizards.

But of course it's all educational – really she'd never imagined that an animal could live through so much pain, and then well, survive. Educational, educational… yes Aunt Hermione would approve. Well not directly, maybe, but in her heart of hearts she'd be happy her niece was learning so much, so quickly. Naturally.

**000**

"_Quite the lioness isn't she?"_

Lioness. She likes the sound of that. Daddy loves it, it makes her sound so very Gryffindor-y. It's a relief to him to have two beautiful children so like himself and his wife. Though to be on the safe side of Political Correctness he pretends that he doesn't mind Al's being sorted into Slytherin.

Fiery and vibrant she's never had to control her temper. Others always bear the consequences of her anger. She's still young enough to think that they always will.

And then suddenly, in one clean sweep, her world changes.

It begins with a bet and ends with a Quidditch Game and later Lily isn't quite sure what happens in the middle. A small, silly little bet, but on which hinges the fate of thousands. Of course no one quite knows about the thousands that crisp spring day when Lily Potter hurls herself off her broom, white as death, half-convulsed with fury and aims with deadly accuracy at cocky young Jacob Wood's throat. _Flagrantia. _Her rage fortifies the spell and suddenly the tall Scottish boy in the yellow-and-black Quidditch robes is a mounting tower of white flame and an agonizing scream that those who hear will never forget. The first casualty.

There's no body to send to Oliver and Margaret Wood.

Lily is left to cool her heels in Azkaban, too proud to rage and scream and bang her head against the bars as she wants to at this injustice. It was an _accident. _She's sixteen and beautiful – she doesn't deserve eight goddamn years in prison! Ginny visits her only once, her anger and humiliation at her daughter, at the monster who demolished her idyllic little world, terrible. She says little but there's a steely look in her eyes that tells Lily, _You'd be better off dead. _

And Lily knows that, to her mother, she would be better off. Mother is not tolerant of failures. The correct attitude of course but hell, she's not a failure, she just made a miscalculation, it was a rash, typical sixteen-year-old thing to do, not manslaughter!

She rots – or so it seems to her – in Azkaban for a month, before _he _arrives and simply hands her the key through the bars, waiting to see what she'll do with it. Literally. She doesn't hesitate a moment, doesn't worry about how she'll live as a fugitive… after all, she's in the right isn't she? She should break out. Of course.

"Good choice."

His black cloak whips around his tall figure, blown by cold sea-winds. Her own long red hair slaps her face and cheeks. Down below she can see the foam-white crests of waves breaking on black rocks. And then he wraps her in his arms, the cloak folding around her body and she leaves Azkaban forever.

**A/N: Exams are oveeeeeeeeeeeer and if I get good marks I'm getting my own laptop FINALLY!! ****Review peeps… oh and this is sort of an open plot bunny as well as part of a series of 'why-shots'. You can resume the story and do whatever you feel like with Lily and Mystery Man, just tell me when you publish the story. And yeah I know the ending is a bit messy and melodramatic, sorry, my Muse is being lazy today. I might edit the ending later. **


	2. Sirius' daughter

If Sirius Black had a special type of girl – he doesn't, he loves women too much for types, but _if _– Debbie Robbins wouldn't be it. He needed, as she often thought to herself because she couldn't help but carry over automatic psychoanalysis from her job to her social life (not that she had much of it, but still), someone with more… color. More vim, more fire. Someone just as beautiful and reckless and unimaginably childish.

Not her.

A fragile little porcelain doll with the wide, slightly incredulous eyes of a child that was just convinced that you were wrong – the type of child that had gotten it fixed, early on, that all grown-ups were out to get you – that was her. A pretty little thing – and the little was never missing when you talked about Debbie, little Debbie, never Deborah, the name she liked better – but a little _too _delicate.

But he did choose her. Well 'choose' would be a wrong word. He came, saw, conquered. And in his generous, _noblesse oblige_ Black fashion – old habits die hard – he let her cling on to him. She was pretty enough to be acceptable arm-candy. Arm-candy and nothing more.

Well, she didn't need anything more. The Marlenes of the world – their obsidian-edged laughter slicing through the air as they dueled to the death, back forever unbowed – would battle it out for Sirius' love. Debbie was just content to be the girl in the corner he sometimes threw a casual smile at. She didn't mind being a beggar.

**000**

He likes her for her smile and her eyes and the way she laughs. Almost apologetically, her hand covering her mouth. He thinks she's awfully cute and that's probably the limit of what he ever thinks about her. Just another girl with a crush on him.

She always listens, and that's a plus point in her favor. Listens when he rants – his rants are works of art and it's really quite pleasant to find someone who pays attention after the first half-hour of raving –, when he whines and moans, when he explains the finer intricacies of his hair-care routine (surprisingly very few people are interested in his shampooing regime). She just lets him talk without offering him sympathy or consolation or advice that he doesn't want. A treasure, certainly.

It's a gusty October night when he slips out of her toasty-warm bed. She looks so sweet and comfortable, her long mahogany-brown hair tumbling over her back, her slender body languid, loose-limbed under the colorful patchwork quilt, that he almost regrets it. But duty calls in the form of an Order meeting and he doesn't even wake her up to say goodbye.

In the morning, he's left a cold spot, uncovered by the quilt, on her bed. She's used to it.

He writes on Halloween night that he'll be busy (at Rayna's house no doubt) and for once, she doesn't regret it. She doesn't know how she'll tell him. She doesn't know _what _she'll tell him. And what'll he say? Will he say anything at all? Will he think she's tricked him?

_But I didn't! What happened that night? _

Freak of nature. It happens.

She decides that she'll tell him tomorrow and snuggles up in bed early. A quiet, uneventful Halloween night.

The next morning is anything but. The world – well the wizarding world, and that's all the world she's ever known – bursts into flame in the dark hours between midnight and dawn. Rubella Apparates right _into _her house – a most serious breach of good manners, but of course it's all forgiven – and flings herself onto her older sister, screaming, "It's over! It's over!" And then there are fireworks and laughter, champagne and tears, a bonfire in the forest (just like old times when sneaking out to the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the night was hardcore) and screaming people in pajamas, all crazily, madly, joyfully mixed up.

The morning after?

It all goes down the drain. Sirius… Peter … James and Lily (sweet little Lily whom she tutored in Charms years and years ago)…

The last she ever sees of _him _is the face of a maniac, his head thrown back in laughter, and around him, a street of corpses. A grisly scene, delivered by the morning owl to her doorstep in the form of a grainy black-and-white photo, plastered over the front page of the Prophet.

And she accepts it. Weeping, screaming, incredulous, yes, but she does come to accept it. Everyone does. Even Remus, who might have guessed.

She keeps her secret to herself. Stiff upper lip, you're British. When her once-svelte figure begins to bloat, blotchy red patches marring her porcelain-perfect skin, her tiny waist thickening, it's only then that they begin to guess. She heads off all their questions with a cool, "I hardly believe that it concerns you – it's my child."

They guess of course but mercifully, they keep their guesses to themselves. Perhaps they wonder a little at her decision to keep the child, _his _child.

**000**

Baby Demelza inherits her parents' worst points – apparently Sirius did have bad points though Debbie (and in truth, almost everybody) never saw them. Cross eyes from some not-so-distant Gaunt ancestor, and the uncertain gray of a rainy morning. Rough, tangling hair, darker than her mother's, lighter than her father's. A yellowish variant of her father's ivory-white skin, prone to freckles and acne. The sharp, square jawline of her grandmother, Walburga Black.

No one would ever have believed her a daughter of the Blacks.

"Who's my father?" is her perennial, dreaded question as she grows up.

"I'll tell you when you're seventeen, when you come of age," is the perennial answer. Demelza learns not to expect anything else.

Debbie meets a man with wonderful eyes and the sweetest, most velvety voice that ever seduced woman. And best of all he calls her Deborah. Not Debbie in the condescending way others did before him. Deborah – a beautiful name for a beautiful woman. It's that simple fact that clinches the deal and makes her lean over and kiss him when he falls on his knees before her, the ring ready.

It's all terribly romantic. The floaty white gown that looked like Cinderella's wedding dress, the sweeping lace veil, the orange blossoms and blue ribbons and white roses, seven-year-old Demelza as bridesmaid in pink satin. They shift to a bigger house, buy a dog, have another baby. A happy family.

Aston stops asking about Demelza's father when he finds it out that it irritates Debbie. They spend their weekends like a normal family – Debbie reading stories out for Colin, Aston teaching Demelza Quidditch. "You're good at this," he says, impressed, watching her fly across the lawn, secured from prying Muggle eyes with Concealment Charms. "We'll make a superstar out of you yet."

"It's in your blood," Debbie later tells her, as they're washing the dishes together. "Your father was a Beater." But that's all she'll say to the ten-year-old.

**000**

Time flies. One moment, your baby _is _actually a baby – a baby everyone decided would never be pretty, not with those cross eyes and that skin – and the next she's buying a new pair of dress robes, all set for fourth year. Not exactly pretty – not with the eyes – but passable. A sweet smile and a laugh like her father's. Free, reckless. "I'm trying out this year," she announces brightly, "Chaser, Mum – wouldn't that be fantastic?"

_It would – if you didn't try to get yourself killed. _

Sirius used to try – quite deliberately, she believes now, to make a sensation. He was always such a reckless boy. "Look after yourself, love," Debbie tells her daughter. "With things the way they are… I'm not inclined to trust Mrs Finnigan's words, or the line that the press is taking, over Dumbledore's."

The year seems to pass in a whirl. Demelza's letters are light – full of news about Colin Creevey and her best friend, Ginny Weasley mostly – but Debbie can sense that something is not quite right. With Umbridge at the school… she shudders delicately and turns to Colin, who's learning about evaporation. She hopes her baby will come out of it all right.

_All this mess, and things just like they were __fourteen years ago. _

Aston has always been an observant man. An eye for finer details – that's one of the things she's always loved about him. Sometimes a little too sharp. Fourteen years too late, the Daily Prophet amends its view on Sirius Black. Debbie reads with openmouthed horror about how he'd spent the last fourteen years, how he was not the man she'd been firmly convinced he was and how he was finally, really, truly dead.

_My God. _

The irrevocability of 'dead' is chilling. When did she tell him goodbye? When did he? On some long-forgotten October night back in '81. She begins to cry.

Aston holds her, smoothes back her damp, tousled hair from her forehead, and mercifully says nothing. He understands.

**000**

History repeats itself. She was a fool to believe it wouldn't.

All the stress and the pain and fear. The nightmares. Only this time her bed isn't cold anymore and there's someone next to her who'll stay till morning. Who won't leave without saying goodbye.

But Demelza…

If she could she would have spared her baby. Would have given anything. _Anything. _

Demelza is seventeen, an old seventeen, when she stands, her body swaying weakly, too weak to support herself, over Colin Creevey. One corpse in a hall littered with those.

"_Who's my father?" _

"_I'll tell you when you're seventeen, when you come of age."_

She never asks about her father. After time she forgets the question.


	3. Great Grandfather Harry

**Harry Potter in Space**

**The Premise**: About a hundred years after Voldemort's death, in order to avoid the virtual certainty of being exposed to Muggles on an increasingly crowded and technologically advanced Earth, there is a movement in Wizarding Britain to travel into space, to find a new world to inhabit, just for Wizarding folk. The story would be about this emigration.

**Some Considerations**: Wizards would not use antimatter or warp drives, right? They'd use _magic_. The spaceship might not be a spaceship -- be creative. Any characters from HP canon, plus any other characters you can think of. You also have about a century of magical advancement to take into account. Either a one-shot or multiple chapter stories are good.

**Pairings**: Any.

**JBean210****, Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges**

_2__111 A.D. _

The slanting dusk-light threw the shadows of the maple trees against the clapboard walls. Tucked under a crazy patchwork quilt, on a rocking chair, an old man sat on the porch. He was as wrinkled and shriveled as a raisin and his hair was quite white, but his eyes were the bright emerald green of yore, the green immortalized in thousands of wizarding periodicals and newspapers all over the world. The years had been indulgent with Harry Potter, if not, perhaps, gentle. Age had not cooled the warmth of his smile nor the sparkle life held for him. He'd grown old with dignity.

The rise and fall of voices, eager voices, questioning, skeptic, disbelieving, hope – but all full of enthusiasm – pierced through the meshes of the screen door and he sighed quietly. His grandchildren – ah he could well guess what they were talking about.

He heard the screen door being banged open violently and looked up in time to see his youngest great-granddaughter sweep outside and fling herself on the porch-steps.

"How's it going, Cassia?" he asked mildly.

Cassia – named by her Roman-history-loving and somewhat batty mother – threw her long strawberry-blond hair away from her face and heaved a long-suffering sigh. She was sixteen and the type of pretty that Harry had liked – red-haired, athletic, oozing self-confidence – when he was younger. "Oh the usual," she said bitterly. "You know how Dad gets – Grandda-" she meant Al, white-haired Al, as perfect a replica of his father at a hundred as he had been at ten – "and Mum on one side, Dad and Grandma on the other side." She jingled her anklet, trailing crystal beads and thing-a-majiks, irritably.

"About Junia?"

"Who else?" Cassia wanted to know. "No seriously, what _is _Dad's problem? She's twenty-nine, she's old enough to make her decisions and if she wants to perish on a planet inhabited by flesh-eating bacteria, then it's her choice, isn't it?" Noticing her great-grandfather wince, she added, "Not that there are flesh-eating bacteria on Cocytus – at least I don't think so."

Harry decided to change the topic. "The river of wailing – who's idea was it to name a planet Cocytus anyway?"

Unable to counter that question with an insouciant answer, Cassia put an outstandingly random question of her own. "Who's idea was it to name earth Earth?" Well she had it from her mother's side – after all, Desdemona was Luna's oldest granddaughter. "Anyway, like I said, it was an honor for her to be chosen. And hey, even if she is devoured by flesh-eating bacteria at least her name will go down for all posterity, won't it?"

"Probably not," Harry murmured, thinking of the memorial that had been erected in honor of those who had fallen in the Battle of Hogwarts, an odd hundred years before. So shiny, so clean, so beautiful… it had looked like it would have lasted forever when he saw it for the first time. And now, what was left of it? A stone fragment, perhaps with a cipher of engraving left on it, buried under a mountain of stone. He shuddered – the memories of the Quake of '25 were not pleasant.

"Well do you know how many witches and wizards they're taking?" Cassia paused for dramatic effect before announcing, "Three hundred! Get that – only three hundred, from all the places over the world. A hundred per ship-"

"They don't look anything like ships," Harry observed, thinking of the long, clean lines of the bullet-like silver 'liner' that had been plastered over the face of every wizarding magazine, periodical and newspaper for the last few months. "Why do you call them that?"

"Because everyone else does," Cassia replied. Flippantly, to his mind. But then he was getting old. "Of course it'll take them _years _to reach but hey they've got infirmaries and space and everything if anyone has a kid – and they're hoping for lots of kids too."

"Is Junia thinking of getting settled with Wenceslas Dolohov then?" It hurt to say Dolohov's name, knowing what his grandfather had done. No, he wouldn't blame it entirely on the Dolohov boy – even though he was Antonin Dolohov's nephew. He remembered with startling vividness the long, pale, twisted face that he'd spied through the sepia-tinted photograph, of the man, on the _Daily Prophet _when he was fifteen – younger than Cassia, he thought, younger than his youngest great-granddaughter was – and then he remembered the pale, good-looking face (not enough to be handsome, but pleasant enough for you to steal another glance) of the nephew. And he remembered Lily, his beautiful daughter.

_How the mighty have fallen. _That had been the blaring headlines when the news had come out, in the most dramatic fashion possible, about the identity of Dolohov's dark lady. Lily Potter. Murderess. Escapee from Azkaban. Harry Potter's daughter.

Life had never been indulgent with Harry Potter. It had sent him to hell and then to heaven, and what was worse than anything, back to hell again. It was a wonder how he'd managed to live to a ripe old age. That he'd managed it with dignity, without turning into a pale shadow of himself (as Ron, withering in St. Mungo's ward, just as the Longbottoms had done many years before him, had).

Cassia was shaking his leg. "You aren't listening to me," she pouted, looking so much like Ginny had at her age that Harry was forced to laugh and promise that he wouldn't let his mind wander again. "Well I was saying that Junia thinks it would be weird getting married because hardly anyone else does nowadays-" sad, but true –"and you know how she hates to stick out."

"She'll always stick out," Harry pointed out, musing about his great granddaughter. If Hermione had been bright, Rose – Rose who had died, fighting and loving her cousin to the last – had been brilliant. But Junia – Junia who was not Desdemona's daughter – was in a class all of her own. Perhaps that was why she had been chosen to be in the program that would deport three hundred of the world's brightest witches and wizards to unknown horizons (well not really unknown, everyone had known about Cocytus ever since the inception of the program) to begin life anew. And then there was of course the matter of Junia's parentage – no one really liked to discuss it. Quite understandable.

"Nay she won't," Cassia shrugged. "I tell you everyone who'll be aboard will be _brilliant._" She sighed wistfully, "I wish I could go."

"Maybe someday you will," Harry said cheerfully. "Those ships will come back in nine years and you'll be old enough then."

"Well they won't take me," Cassia said. "I mean, what do I have?" The wistfulness, the crack in the poised mirror was old – Harry had seen his children, his grandchildren and his older great-grandchildren go through it. Perhaps he would live one day to see his great, great grandchildren go through it – after all, Ishaan, James' great grandchild, was already twelve and would be soon going through it.

_Maybe I don't want to live that long. _

Perhaps the way he consoled her was old too. "You're beautiful," he said, flicking her hair playfully. "You're brilliant at Quidditch, you're so bright…"

"Yeah, but I'm still so _average_," she wailed. "Look at you, look at Grandda, look at almost everyone in our family. They're all so famous and just so awesome – I'm nothing next to them!"

"Uncle Roger is only an accountant," Harry reminded her. "And perhaps," he said, thinking of Lily, "Perhaps it's better to live out your life quietly but happily, to do good and be unnoticed for it, than to be noticed for things that aren't…"

Cassia must have been thinking about her Grand-Aunt as well for she jiggled her anklet as she did when she was nervous. "Perhaps," she said quietly. Her eyes misted over, and Harry knew that she was thinking about other things. Other wars, other faces that she'd never seen except in albums and through her grandparents' Pensieves. Time goes on. The world changes. History always repeats itself.

It wasn't a thing for her to think about. She was so young and so pretty, the fading sunlight glinting off her red-blond hair, so fresh and full of life. She reminded him of so many people, the lovely, young girls he'd grown up with, who'd grown old by his side. Lyra Malfoy, Rose's only child, who Lily had personally hunted down and killed. Ginny when she was a girl, before the shadow of darkness had not permanently marked her life. Dominique Weasley, who, under the Imperius curse, had hacked her mother and sister to pieces.

It wasn't a thing for her to think about, not now. There'd be time enough for that soon enough. "Look at that sunset," he said softly, pointing. "Funny isn't it – the moon and the sun out together?"

"Woah, yeah," she said, squinting, her eyes brightening in pleased surprise. "I never saw that before. Did you?"

She'd stopped jingling her anklet and that made him happy. The little things were enough to make him happy enough. "No," he lied, even though he had, many, many times.

The light was shining on her face as she tilted it towards him and there was laughter in her eyes. Normally her eyes were just simply grey but today, gilt by sunlight, they were pools of silver light. Her resemblance to Luna, one of her great-grandmothers (it was odd to think that she had so many of them), was striking. "Guess you haven't seen everything."

"Well I've seen enough," he said quietly. "I think I've had enough excitement to last me a lifetime."

There was a familiar ring to those words, he thought, but he couldn't quite remember why. It was Al, leaning against the screen door, who had listened to his parents telling him the story of the defeat of Lord Voldemort so many times over, who understood. His father had uttered those same words at the end of the Battle of Hogwarts.

**A/N: Great-Grandfather!Harry is so… weird to write about. Depressing too. ****Guess I didn't really follow the challenge much did I? **


	4. Harry as a girl

_Her eyelids cover her big, curious brown eyes._

_Her gorgeous, shining pigtails match her gorgeous silk nightgown._

_Her porcelain skin softens the harsh image that surrounds her._

_She is a perfect replica of a baby doll,_

_Encircled in a perfect replica of chaos._

**Perfect Little Girl – thecantervilleghost (fictionpress)**

"She'll have lovely red hair, just like her mother's," the midwife tells Lily Potter.

"Auburn," Lily croaks, croaks because she's too tired to speak. But she's happy, blissfully happy, as she lies in bed, with parched throat, screaming muscles and soul still taut and on hair-trigger edge even hours after the ordeal. She lets Sirius do the talking, bright, bouncing-on-his-feet Sirius. And Peter, the harried expression he's come to wear almost permanently, melting into one of his old, goofy grins as he coos over the baby – _my baby_, Lily thinks in incredulity and something akin to pleased bewilderment. Even Remus chuckles and cracks a dry joke over too over her little bald head – "It'll be a miracle if she has hair of any sort, let alone auburn". James is just beyond words.

Later when the boys have all left – boys, they're still boys to her –, with her friends' bouquets of glacial-white and coral-pink roses and pink-and-gold balloons to keep her company, Lily ponders the mystery of life. New life. With Dorea's birth – Dorea, they'd decided if it was a girl, after James' mother, killed only a few brief months ago – she feels like she's been reborn.

The baby mewls in the nighttime, like a little kitten and Lily switches on the lights in her solitary hospital room to take her from the bassinet. It's as she's nursing her, with her own long auburn hair falling over the baby's soft, dimpled, wrinkled pink skin that she notices her eyes. She rather wonders that she hadn't taken a better look at them before.

They're beautiful eyes, so large, starred with such long, feathery black lashes. Hazel eyes, with a golden glow that reminds Lily uncannily of _Felix Felicis. _Just like her father's.

"You'll be my lucky charm, won't you?" Lily whispers to Dorea. "Just like your daddy."

**000**

It's not to be. With the greatest irony in the world, Dorea Potter brings everyone in the world luck – except those who really matter.

Hagrid cries, big, fat tears, as big as his heart, oozing over his grizzled cheeks, as he scoops the frail, pink-clad little doll out of her upturned crib. She's crying too, howling for the mother that she'll never see again, for the father who was conjuring colored balls of light for her just five minutes ago.

"_Hush little baby, don't say a word…" _

He warbles a lullaby in his cracking voice. Borne on its silken wings, she falls asleep, a pink-cheeked, hazel-eyed morsel of a thing in his great hands. He puts her down, on Dumbledore's sadly-sighed murmurs (sad, jubilant, it's hard to tell, it's so mixed up), on the stone doorstep of the pretty, picture-perfect stone-and-wood house. Her silken lashes rest on her satin-soft cheeks and he stands simply, for a moment, to watch her.

Little Dorea.

He remembers her grandmother, Dorea Black, slim and stately as a willow tree. Long lashes, as black as the smooth blue-black tresses of hair curling about her pretty, piquant little face, always fluttering, always beckoning. Even at inconsequential little Gryffindor first-years.

"_Don't laugh at them, Druella, they're not all of them so small – just look at this one. Hello there, dearie, what's your name?"_

"_Rubeus, ma'am." _

"_A fine name! There, don't look so nervous, you'll get used to this maze of a school. Transfiguration? You needn't hurry, Professor Dumbledore is the kindest soul, he'll understand that you're new… just go that way. Yes, yes, I know, you're welcome." _

He shakes his head and the lovely Black Princess with the enchanting eyes dissolves into the green haze of the serpentine constellation hanging over the Potter's house and then again into the pink-clad baby on the Dursley's doorstep.

"Be safe," he says, crossing his fingers in the old gesture, and for a moment he doesn't know who he's saying it for. Dorea Black, so vivid in life that it's hardly possible that she's dead now, just dead, or her granddaughter, the doll on the doorstep.

"Be safe," he repeats and vanishes into the night.

**000**

Petunia finds her the next morning, and lets out an ear-splitting scream. The milk bottle drops out of her hand, clanging violently on the doorstep before shattering into a million glittering glass shards on the newly-moved grass. The eyelashes flutter open and Petunia looks down into wide hazel eyes. Even in the cold, grey November dawn-light, the warm, golden undertones in those eyes glow.

_She remembers chocolate bars __given on birthdays and Christmas, wrapped between thin layers of glinting gold tinsel-foil. Lights flashing off her long golden earrings as she dances the night away with Vernon. Her mother's wedding ring, the true gold shining bright and clear even as she fades away. _

She bends down to pick up the note attached to the baby's bassinet. But before she reads it, she scoops up the child, knowing, knowing from the face – not the eyes, but every feature is strikingly like Lily's, like Dorea's other grandmother Iris's – who it is. "Lets get you out of the cold," she mutters and marches upstairs, to put Dorea in the cradle, next to Dudley.

**000**

She looks nothing like the grandmother she's named for, and everything like the one she isn't. Iris Brownstone, Iris Evans. A lovely, laughing, lilting young thing in old sepia-tinted photographs. Long, flowing golden-red hair.

Petunia loves brushing Dorea's hair. When the little girl closes her eyes and curls up on her aunt's lap, Petunia can almost imagine that it's Lily, little, baby Lily come back. The Lily who turned her back for all time when she was eleven. Petunia doesn't miss the green-eyed girl whom everyone called 'spunky' – and Petunia called 'audacious'. She misses the kid with the determinedly red hair – not auburn – who'd creep up to her sister's bed in the night during thunderstorms.

She likes to think that Dorea is her daughter, and it's an easy enough fiction to manage. Dorea has the same long neck, the same slender figure. As for the hair… well, after all Petunia's own mother was a redhead. Mr and Mrs Dursley and their two beautiful children, Dudley and Dorea.

That's how they pose in photographs – Vernon, his beefy chest thrust forwards, his arm around his wife's stylishly stole-draped shoulders, Dudley in his cute little pin-striped suit, Dorea in her frilly pink frock. What a delightfully average family.

Dudley never sees any competition in Dorea, in his tiny, doll-like little sister, and perhaps that's why he takes so kindly to her. She's his princess and he's the fierce dragon protecting her from unworthy knights. It starts from preschool, when he punches Piers Polkiss who runs up to Dorea at break to offer her a daisy (later of course, Piers wins Dudley's approval when he socks Dudley as hard as he can, instead of crying for the teacher).

But that's what big brothers do. Bully their sisters, harass other boys… and be harassed by their sisters in return.

Yes, what a delightfully average family. Baking cupcakes and cookies, playing dress-up and hosting tea parties with the neighborhood girls, putting on nail-polish and feeling oh-so grown-up when Auntie gets ready for a party (Auntie, it's more like Mummy for Dorea)… Dorea really is part of the family.

Watching her racing across the lawn with Dudley – Vernon purposefully lagging a few steps behind them –, insisting that they hang lace curtains up in the treehouse, it's easy for Petunia to imagine that it's her daughter, part of her. It's easy, until Dorea's long red hair begins to darken, to acquire that familiar auburn tinge…

There are incidents, little ones that hardly stick out in anyone's memory but sharp-eyed Petunia's. Barbies, their sleek blond hair metamorphosing into unruly turquoise curls to match their miniskirts, nails streaked with rainbow patterns even before she's had time to apply nail-polish on Dorea, Dudley managing, almost impossibly, to shot every goal during the second-graders' basketball game.

Petunia really, really doesn't like the color auburn.

**000**

They tell her nothing, show her nothing, reveal nothing. All that Dorea knows of her parents is of a pair of pretty, slightly dim 'young people' – 'hooligans', Vernon always manages to mutter out of the corner of his mouth whenever the story comes up – who were killed in a tragic car accident. Tragic but timely.

Petunia makes sure that it's inscribed into her niece's head that it was better that they died at twenty-one – "Your father, darling," she coos softly, brushing Dorea's shining hair at night, "was, I am sorry to say unemployed. Intoxicated, quite frequently. Lily was… well, a lovely girl, but she was so young, didn't know how to make the right choices… for your sake, dear, I hope you'll make the right choices in life. Know who your true friends are."

"Of course I do," Dorea says, with a sleepy smile.

She's eleven when it comes out, with the first letter on the doorstep. Anger shimmers under her veins as she waves the cream-colored envelope under her uncle's nose and asks, with deadly calm, what it is. Petunia has expected the day, prepared for it. She sits Dorea down and quietly, gravely, in words simple enough for an eleven-year-old to comprehend, explains everything. About wizards and witches and their bad, scary world, about torture devices secreted within the bowels of medieval castles (she embellishes when she has to), about the hatred borne by those of 'pure-blood' for 'Muggle-borns' and 'half-bloods' (she thanks God that she still remembers Lily's words). A world of black fantasy, which, beyond the nose-biting teacups and the cute wands, was a masquerade of horrors.

Vernon, listening at the keyhole, silently commends his wife yet again, and thinks how lucky he is to have married a woman like her. No, not a woman _like _her, just her and her alone.

"Know who your friends are," Petunia says, low and stern, at the end.

Dorea is intimidated by the voice and the steel-chip blue eyes – as it was intended for her to be – but there's still a spark of Lily's spunk left in her. "I thought I knew!" she says hotly, raising her chin.

Petunia sighs and turns her head away. "Then perhaps it's time to show you those people whom you think are friends." And she writes her letter to Dumbledore, requesting the presence of a 'representative of your race' at her house, to teach 'my understandably bewildered and distressed niece'.

On a tepid August night, he arrives in a swirl of plum velvet robes, and is ushered into the living room by a red-faced Vernon. Dorea, sitting pretty and prim, takes in his extravagant attire, the broken nose and the blue eyes, twinkling with almost sinister benignity behind the half-moon spectacles. Petunia's hard eyes bore holes into her back and she's uncomfortably aware of the fact that she's standing at the crossroads of life.

Perhaps it's too much for an eleven-year-old to take.

"I think that you might care to begin at the beginning, Mr Dumbledore," Petunia says, her long fingernails digging into the carved armrests of Dorea's chair. She leans slightly over her niece, omniscient, intimidating. "About how her parents were murdered, perhaps?"

_Don't they ever stop twinkling? _Dorea wonders as he turns with a kindly smile towards her. She squirms, uncomfortable under the gaze of those electric-blue eyes. _He looks like he can see right through me. _It's not a very nice feeling. On the one side she can feel her aunt's eyes, on the other the odd Dumbledore-man's. He paints a world, black, white and grey, for her but to her, unacquainted with reality, it's frighteningly grim. She'd rather have the rainbow-spangled childhood that she thinks is the whole world, than the razor-edged truth.

"_Know who your true friends are." _

"_Of course I do," Dorea says, with a sleepy smile._

She does, and in the end Dumbledore rises, a smile – perhaps slightly disappointed, but benign and kind all the same – on his face and says, "Well if that's the way you feel, Miss Potter."

"It is," she croaks out, uncertain whether she's made the right decision. Later, when Petunia crushes her into the hug of a lifetime and Dudley generously gives her his share of pie at dessert – monumental act of self-sacrifice – she's sure she has.

**000**

Seasons pass, birthdays go by and Dorea almost – almost, but not quite – forgets the curious incident of the professor in the nighttime. She shoots up and curves out like any other girl. She dyes her long, silky hair blond – _"It's so hard to believe that Mrs Dursley's your aunt and not your mum, Dory," "Yeah, sometimes I forget, myself!" – _and learns the power of her stunning hazel eyes. Granted, she doesn't meet any boys at St. Anne's – the sister boarding school of Smeltings, where Petunia was educated many years before – but during the holidays…

With Vernon and Dudley's express approval, she begins dating Piers Polkiss. She thinks he looks awfully like a rat, but he's rich and likeable – really a lot like Dudley, whom she adores in typical little-sister way. Petunia beams with pride and remembers her own girlhood when Dorea and Piers stand together in the living room, false smiles in place, she pretty in her peacock-blue dress, he almost good-looking in his tuxedo, being photographed by Vernon.

_They'll make such a sweet couple, _she thinks fondly, already preparing the guest list for the wedding in her mind. _Just like Vernon and me. _

She was a nice girl, a likeable girl inspite of all her little vices. The type of girl who you sat up with late at night, painting eachother's toenails and whispering secrets to. The type of girl who's legs the boys loved and you envied. Spunky, lazy, impetuous, not always very polite, sweet and charming only in front of those who counted… she was better and worse than you expected. Just normal, just another pretty teenage girl.

She was sixteen, when Lord Voldemort rose again, and the world began to slide into chaos. She was sixteen and no one in her world knew or cared.

She was seventeen, a brittle, butterfly-bright seventeen, when the blood protection lifted. Dorea Potter, who sixteen years before had defeated the Dark Lord.

_Pfft, _Draco Malfoy thought succinctly as he watched the slim, pretty blond girl swinging in the sunny garden. _What a laugh…_

A jet of green light shot from the tip of the hawthorn wand and before the girl had toppled over, he'd disappeared with a crack as silent as a faded autumn leaf slipping to the ground.

**A/N: ****I suppose I could have written more about this, but meh, I'm lazy. And yes I do love the book **_**The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. **_


	5. Hufflepuff Bellatrix

It was a mite of a girl who stood, shuffling her feet, at the Hogsmeade Station, jostled as the crowd surged by. She was just as small, just as tentative, just as adorable as the other first-years around her, trailing behind the ungainly silhouette and bobbing circle of light that was the gamekeeper. But that was probably because her mouth still steamed from the Acid Pops pride had forced her to consume in the train. If a Rosier boy could swallow five Acid Pops in one go then a Black girl could swallow twenty. It was her family's honor at stake!

"_I expect you to remember your station at all times, and to conduct yourself with the dignity of a Black lady.__ Keep that unruly tongue of yours in check." _

Her head ringing with her mother's admonitions, she bumped down the long line of first-years in the antechamber to stand next to her cousin, Evan Rosier. Professor Flitwick threw open the tall oak double-doors, studded with iron nails, to the Great Hall and Bella only just managed to suppress her gasp of admiration. Some of the Mudbloods didn't even try. Bella wrinkled her nose daintily and muttered, "Plebeians," into Evan's ear, but she had to admit that they had reason to gasp. It was just so _huge_… the sheer size of it was intimidating. And then there were all those people! So many bright eyes flicking impatiently over the first-years', faces merging into indistinguishable flesh-colored pinpricks… Bella had to remind herself that she was a Black and Blacks did not gawk, to keep herself in check.

Names were being called out and frightened children shuffling to the three-legged stool. When it was her turn she forgot to sweep towards the stool as she'd intended to. She was eleven and – though she would have died rather than admit it – scared. She shuffled. She dropped the hat over her head. Her fingernails dug into her knees and she crossed her ankles nervously.

_Well, what have we her__e? A little Black princess, eh?_

The voice was kind and friendly and Bella felt herself nodding, relief settling warmly like a cloak over her shoulders.

"_No need to worry… I'm sure you'__ll do fine, won't you? Quick mind, sharp, not inclined towards procrastination? No, a great deal like your Auntie Walburga, though you seem to lack her… rawness. Diligent when it suits you, eh?"_

Bella didn't know what diligent meant, but she thought it sounded like a good word so she thought, _Yes._

_Loyal to those you feel deserve your loyalty. Single-minded. But not, if I may seem… very ambitious. You're willing to let others lead, and though you'll bid your fealty only to the best you'll follow them to the ends of the earth. _

She couldn't quite keep track of what the Hat was saying but she smiled because they sounded nice and thought the Hat was a very nice Hat indeed, since it seemed to be complimenting her.

_Ah well then I know very well where to put you! Yes, Bellatrix Black it's… _

**000**

"_HUFFLEPUFF_?"

Druella Black signaled to a house-elf impatiently and said sharply, "Fetch the smelling salts for your mistress." She cast a disparaging glance towards her husband, who was openly cowering from his fire-breathing sister, and turned once again to her sister-in-law. "Yes, Walburga. Hufflepuff."

She handed the vinaigrette the house-elf had brought to Walburga and continued as though she was only discussing the weather, "I am as… disappointed as you but I see no reason why we should lose our…"

"You brought this upon our family," Walburga proclaimed in hollow tones. If she had said "Thou shalt see me at Philippi," the effect could not have been more ominous. "You have nurtured a viper to your bosom."

"Do be sensible about it," Druella pleaded. "We've had many fine, upstanding family members in Hufflepuff."

"_You _have," Walburga said sourly. "_You _are a Rosier."

Druella pursed up her lips. "Better a sensible Hufflepuff than an irrational Slytherin. It's not as if there haven't been rogues from the Blacks and in Slytherin too."

Walburga turned an unlovely shade of magenta that clashed dreadfully with the cherry-red upholstery in the sitting room. Druella privately decided that she'd make a new gift of _tasteful _curtains as a Christmas present to her sister-in-law.

"Bella seemed heartbroken," Cygnus said, raising his voice for the first time since he'd entered Grimmauld Place. He shot a furtive glance at Walburga. "_Auntie Walburga will kill me, I feel so bad that I want to kill myself… _that's what she wrote."

"Tell her she has my permission to do so," Walburga said, muttering something to herself about doll-faced Rosier girls whose blood weakened the strain. "Merlin's beard! Imagine the riff-raff she's rubbing shoulders with!"

**000**

Bella was doing her very best to keep her shoulders as uncontaminated as possible. She perched on the end of her seat, staring at her hands and trying not to cry. She felt like crying, lost in this crowd of laughing, shouting, almost obscenely merry _Hufflepuffs. _She didn't belong here. She belonged at the Slytherin Table, with Evan and Hadrian and the others, where everyone was making polite, sedate, dignified conversation and deftly, elegantly handling their silverware (not stuffing their faces full of cake in this disgustingly plebeian way!)…

She felt a finger tapping her shoulder and whirled around, her hand automatically jumping to her now-contaminated shoulder. It was a little girl, shorter and plumper than herself, with a rather pig-like little pink face and mousy brown hair she'd tied back with a pink velvet ribbon. "You're Bellatrix Black, aren't you?"

"Yes," Bella said carefully, infusing that monosyllable with all the frostiness she was capable of. She did not ask the insignificant little girl who she was.

"I'm Dolores Umbridge!" the girl squealed happily. "Opheline Selwyn's niece… I saw you at the Ministry Ball last Christmas, don't you remember?"

Opheline Selwyn… a woman her mother nodded to in the streets and privately told her daughters, "She is no lady." _I do not associate with creatures of your caliber, _Bella thought but said, with the dignity of a Black lady, "Perhaps."

The Umbridge girl beamed radiantly upon her and it was just at that moment that Bella noticed that she had brought her plate – loaded with food (_No wonder she's so fat, _Bella thought glancing quickly down at the tiny portions on her own plate). "So, Bellatrix," Dolores said, tucking into her food, and with the air of a High Inquisitor, "What shall we talk about?"

_Oh dear. Oh dear. _

**A/N: I know Bella in Hufflepuff sounds like excellent material for a crack fic (which I'd love to read!) and I agree that she's hardly Hufflepuff material except for the blind loyalty towards her family and Voldemort part… but that's why I added this in an if-shot, isn't it? ****Think about it… if certain events in Bella's childhood could have influenced her to believe in justice – her own warped sense of justice – and fair play, then… well she's certainly hard-working and has the loyalty thing coming nicely along doesn't it? It would really be interesting to see a Hufflepuff!Bella fic, complete with Dolores Umbridge, perhaps even Cornelius Fudge (hint hint). **


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